With sales topping £5bn and over 50 years as a listed company on the London
Stock Exchange, Bunzl is an unsung and quite unique British company given
its international success story.

Bunzl provides a 'one-stop-shop' distribution and outsourcing service offering a broad range of products for its customers to operate their businesses, be it a coffee cup, cleaning fluid or till roll - all of which are everyday essentials for serving their customers. Operating from 270 warehouses over 170,000 deliveries are made to Bunzl customers every week.

Selling these items on a day to day basis makes Bunzl very much a GDP plus business and, in spite of the well-known sluggish conditions in the UK, Bunzl’s UK and Ireland business has just posted positive growth, growing by 2.5pc in the first-half of 2012.

A key reason for Bunzl's long-term success has been its discipline to reinvest the strong cash generated into value enhancing acquisitions; this has enabled Bunzl to deliver consistent double-digit growth, which has provided shareholders with premium returns over the short, medium and long term.

Bunzl's tried and tested acquisition strategy is to build up a strong competitive position across key market sectors and roll this out across new geographies. Over the past ten years Bunzl has acquired over 60 businesses creating a group with a platform that no one else can replicate on its scale and across its international markets. In 2004, Bunzl was present in only ten countries, it is now in 23 with many more such as Chile, Turkey and Sweden at the right stage of development to enter through acquisition.

The UK business accounts for a little under 20pc of group sales and has provided a blueprint as Bunzl has entered new countries - replicating the successful broad-based model of the UK. The Group results have been consistent year in, year out. Over 2004-11, operating profit, earnings and dividends have all grown by 10pc per annum on average with a similar increase at first-half results yesterday.

With time and the right acquisitions there is no reason why Bunzl couldn't replicate the UK model across other geographies providing Bunzl, and therefore its shareholders and employees, with huge potential for future growth.